


what came first: the hero or the scars

by rosestone



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Gen, Nomad Steve Rogers, Secret Identity, Vigilantism, not a mundane au
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-01
Updated: 2019-05-01
Packaged: 2020-02-10 23:10:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,625
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18670252
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rosestone/pseuds/rosestone
Summary: Once, Nick Fury had a dream: a team of extraordinary people, prepared to defend the Earth from any threat that descended on it, no matter how strange those threats might be.He probably didn't expect that team to have so many teenagers in it.(Or: a story about friendship, deprogramming yourself, vigilantism, and maybe saving the world along the way.)





	1. Chapter 1

Some days Phil Coulson loved his job.

Some days, he had to convince a deprogrammed teenage Russian assassin that yes, her therapist really did mean it when she said she wanted her to attend high school.

"This is a waste of my abilities," she said, arms folded.  He was pretty sure the only reason she wasn't standing on the table and waving her arms was because she'd been taught to hide her emotions.  "What _possible_ reason could there be?  I already know everything I need to!"

"For one thing," he said, as patiently as he could manage, "you are, in fact, underage.  Legally speaking, you need to be in some kind of education."

"Who'd know if I wasn't?"

"We would.  We are, in fact, government employees.  We're bound to obey federal and state laws.  I'm sure you know that."

She waved a hand dismissively.

"For another," he went on, "this is an important part of your clearance to work for SHIELD, as decided by your SHIELD-mandated therapist.  Your former employers may have allowed their spies to work themselves into uselessness and simply replaced them with newly trained operatives, but we don't believe in that.  We want our employees to be stable, and to be able to work for as long as they want or to transition into civilian life with no difficulties, and that requires us to give you the support you need to maintain your mental health."

That seemed to have struck a chord; she slumped back into her chair, still frowning but no longer looking like she wanted to jump up and argue.  He supposed he shouldn't be surprised.  She'd left the remains of her former organisation by her own choice, after all, and she'd chosen to come to them.

"What Dr Chu believes you need right now is normality.  Now, yes, I understand an American high school isn't normal for you, but it'll give you a chance to find out if that's something you _want_ , rather than dismissing it outright."

She let out a dissatisfied sound.

"You can think of it as an opportunity to practise your infiltration skills, if you like," he added.  "You may need to blend in with teenagers at some point.  Spending more time around them now, in a low-stakes situation, could be very useful in the future."

"I suppose."

"And, of course, you won't be the only one there."

Her head shot up.  "I won't?  Are you giving me a _baby-sitter?_ "

"Not precisely.  You're not the only young person SHIELD's recruited recently; your classmate is one Clint Barton, a sharpshooter who we've been assisting out of a bad situation.  His secondary education has been patchy at best, so he's been embedded at the school for the last six months working towards his GED.  He's a few years older than you, but we thought it might be good for you two to have a chance to work together before any missions come up.  If you get along, you might make a good team."

"I suppose it might be useful to have a sniper on some missions," she said, with the air of one conceding an enormous favour.  "I don't suppose we could just meet on SHIELD premises without the rest of this ridiculousness?"

He shook his head.  "This is to get your clearance, remember?  Now, did you have any more questions?"

She snorted.  "No."

"Good.  Information packet is in your room, along with a directory of people to contact to get appropriate clothing and equipment.  Term starts in a week.  That should be plenty of time to get everything sorted."

She stood, sighing enormously, and gave him the most sarcastic salute he'd ever witnessed.  "Understood."

This was good, he reminded himself as she left the room.  She'd barely been willing to show any emotion when they first recruited her, let alone anything that might have smacked of insubordination.  That she was acting like a typical teenager was an incredible improvement.

It was also incredibly annoying.

Spending time with Clint Barton was probably not going to make her attitude any more bearable, considering he didn't seem to have any settings _other_ than insubordinate.  Good for her, but...

Well.  At least he wasn't going to be the on-site agent watching over this powderkeg.  He was just the poor bastard who had to organise everything.

And with that, it was time for his next appointment.  Hopefully this one would go a little better.

Oh, who was he kidding?


	2. Chapter 2

It was going to be really strange going to school without Jane.

Which was a good thing, _obviously_ , because Janie was a for-real genius and if someone was willing to give her a scholarship to Genius School, she needed to grab onto it with both hands and not let go.  That was going to be her ticket to the big leagues.  Ivy-level schools, and... whatever you did after an undergrad degree when you were a genius.  Research, probably, since weird astronomical shit wasn't going to get her a job with Apple and she wouldn't take it even if they offered.

But.  That didn't mean it wasn't going to be strange.  She'd gotten used to spending a lot of time with her, trading help with physics for analysis of whatever Great American Novel they were being subjected to in English that week.  Gossiping.  Plotting their attack on the skies, or university, or whatever asshole had attracted Jane's wrath that week.

She was being stupid about it.  Jane wasn't even that far away.  Hell, she was close enough they could get together after school, even, if she was allowed out the boarding school's gates.

Ugh.

Of course, Jane not being here had one major disadvantage.  Their grade had settled into its cliques by now, and forcing her way in would be difficult, not to mention incredibly unfun.  Being the weird nerdy kid had been okay when there were two of them, but now... double ugh.

She'd overheard the admin staff saying there were going to be some new students, though.  Maybe one of them would be okay to spend time with, and also desperate enough not to mind how uncool she was.  Maybe.

 

She slumped on a bench near the offices, pretending to be engrossed in the novel she was holding.  The vice-principal's office wasn't _entirely_ made out of glass, but there were enough windows that she could see the new students pretty well.

There were four of them, which was a weirdly high intake of non-freshmen at one time.  She squinted up over the top of her book.

Option number one: female, which automatically put her above the rest of them.  Hot.  Looked genuinely interested in whatever bullshit VP Smith was spouting, which suggested she was a really good liar, because he was _boring_.

On the other hand, she stood in a way that reminded Darcy of some of the people she'd met during the weird summer shit she definitely wasn't going to mention to anyone or even think about.  Which would be kind of unsettling to be near, if it kept making her think about things she didn't want to think about, and maybe also meant she was involved in that kind of thing.  Or knew people who were.

Also, the way her hands lingered near her belt was an awful lot like last year's transfer, Barton, who had _amazing_ arms but who she was pretty sure was some kind of criminal.  So spending time with her might be a bad idea.

... And hey, here he came now.  He leaned against the wall by the offices, apparently determined to pretend Darcy wasn't there.  Well, fine.

That pretty much ruled _her_ out.

Option number two was wearing sunglasses indoors.  She immediately mentally dubbed him Douche.

He was slumped in his chair, tapping his foot and staring at the ceiling.  So, he clearly didn't care if Smith decided he was disrespectful five minutes into the school year. 

And now that she was studying him, his clothes all looked really expensive.  So he was some rich kid, probably thrown out of his last school, who didn't give a shit about staying in this one.

Douche was out.

Option number three was hunched in the chair furthest from everyone else in the room, arms wrapped around himself, staring at the floor.  She couldn't see the expression on his face from this angle, but judging by the extreme _do not touch me_ vibes he was giving off, it didn't seem like he wanted to be there.

He was a possibility.  Maybe.  He might not want friends.  Or he might be enough of a basketcase that trying to befriend him would be a bad idea.  But at the very least, he didn't seem like he'd be too proud to turn her down.

Option number four was... _super_ hot.  Tall and muscly and blond.

And giving off a serious Army Cadet vibe, which was not something she was into.

And every bit as tense as Basketcase.  Just better at hiding it.

A little.

From people who weren't actually looking.

On the whole, none of them were really ideal.  Now that she was thinking about it, she'd realised that what she'd been hoping for was someone Jane-like, who'd slot into that empty hole in her life neatly and without a fuss.  Which was ridiculous - _nobody_ was like Jane - but, well.  It would've been easier.

Basketcase was probably her best option, which wasn't saying much.  Maybe he'd calm down given a few days to adjust.

Maybe.

Ugh.

 

She hadn't really expected to see any of them for the rest of the day.  _Think_ about them, maybe, since the whole thing might make a nice anecdote to tell Jane if they ended up talking later; she tried to make sure that happened a few times a week, since Jane had a terrible habit of getting too wrapped up in studying to think about eating proper meals or getting to sleep on time, and it was easier to jolt her out of it if she could drop a reminder in the middle of a conversation.

And yet, there Cadet was, standing outside her bio class in the same nope-definitely-not-anxious stance she'd seen him in earlier.  Most of her classmates were politely ignoring him, though a few were glancing fairly obviously at his arms.

Everyone here had at least one reasonably good friend in the class.  Mr King, from what she'd heard, never bothered pairing students up himself unless people had the sort of falling out that made it impossible for them to work together.  And unless someone was late, they had equal numbers.

Ugh.

Maybe he wouldn't be the gung-ho wannabe soldier he _looked_ like he was.

"Hi."

He blinked.  "Um.  Hi?"

"Darcy Lewis.  Thought I'd come introduce myself, since we're probably going to end up being lab partners this semester.  Assuming, of course, that someone doesn't decide to split an existing partnership to see if you're datable, which honestly strikes me as a really stupid risk to take, but hey!  Humans do that kind of shit."

He blinked again.  "I.  Uh.  Think that would feel weird.  To me, I mean."

"You have common sense!  Awesome.  Always nice to see."

This was possibly not the sort of first impression she should be making, considering she was actively auditioning people for New School-Based Friend, But Not BFF, That Position Already Taken.  Oh well.

His lips twitched.  "I'm not sure if I should take that as a compliment or not, to be honest.  Steve Rogers."

He shifted his books into his left arm and offered a hand for her to shake.  After a baffled moment, she took it.  His hand was hot and dry - no sweaty palms, yes!  He didn't try to go in for a kiss on the hand or anything weird like that either, unlike the last guy who'd gone for a handshake.  Maybe the quasi-military vibe warded off potential creepiness?

"Since we're being all polite and introducing ourselves and whatnot," she said, "I should warn you, I'm solidly average in the hard sciences.  Except physics, where I have an unfair leg up due to being friends with a bona-fide genius, and as a result am solidly just _above_ average instead.  So partnering with me isn't going to magically boost your grades or anything like that."

"Oh, that's - I wasn't expecting anything like that.  I'm probably average - I've had kind of a disrupted education, so I'm not 100 percent sure -"

"Yeah, I figured, what with the words _probably average_ -"

Luckily, the door opened before she could shove her foot any further into her mouth.  Steve seemed kind of surprised by the sudden rush of students, so she forged ahead, grabbing them a lab bench solidly in the middle of the room.  By the time he caught up to her, she'd had a chance to catch her breath and remind herself - again - that she was _trying_ to make friends with him.  Okay, so she hadn't liked the looks of him at first, but that didn't mean she should let her inner asshole loose the way she'd been doing.  She had to at least _pretend_ to be a normal person here.

Like every first class of the year, it was basically an exercise in time-wasting.  Introductions - Steve, dragged to the front of the class so everyone could meet the New Student, looked like he wanted to curl up in a ball and die.  Class syllabuses, read out agonisingly slowly.  Mr King spent an entire twenty minutes talking about his expectations, which, quite frankly, was time that would've been better spent sleeping.

Just when she was starting to think they weren't going to do _anything_ all period, he passed around a stack of worksheets.  Everyone's favourite.  At least he hadn't asked them to complete them in silence.

Clearly she shouldn't have bothered getting her laptop out.  It'd been a good habit to be in last year, with a teacher who tended to assume that anyone who turned their homework in on time was a diligent student who wouldn't use them for anything except taking notes.  And she _had_ used it for notes, too.  She'd just also spent a lot of time on Tumblr.

"Is it just me," Steve said, frowning down at his worksheet, "or is some of this kind of... easy?"

"Uh - yes."  She flipped it over.  "Okay, hang on.  I think he's starting off with material from two years ago just in case we're all idiots.  Or he accidentally double-sided the worksheets for two separate grades."

"Well, at least I know I'm not really far behind."

Darcy eyed him - staring down at the worksheet with an expression that suggested he was about as interested in it as she was - and then glanced up at Mr King.  He wasn't paying very much attention.  As long as it _looked_ like they were working, they'd probably be fine.

"So, what's your story?"

He blinked.  "My story?"

"You know.  Your backstory.  History.  Why you're all of a sudden showing up here.  What brought you to the area.  That kind of thing."

"Is - is that important?"

She gave him a flat stare.  "Do you _want_ to spend the rest of the year sitting in agonising silence, or talking about nothing except _worksheets?_   I mean, you do you, but that seems incredibly boring to me.  And the first step to _not_ doing that is to have some kind of friendly conversation, and the obvious first-meeting version of that is introducing ourselves.  I can talk about myself if you really want, but frankly I suspect you have a more interesting recent history than mine, which involves living here since forever."

"Oh.  Right.  That... makes sense."

"Also, there's the fact that you've been kind of weird about a few things - I mean, going by the look on your face, you'd never had to do the new student thing before.  Which is strange for a guy who's apparently had a disrupted education.  Also, do you actually have anything in your bag?  It's tiny.  Like, I'm pretty sure I had to haul more stuff to school in the second grade than I could fit in there."

He winced.  "I look that weird, huh."

"I mean... maybe not to everyone?  I've been told I'm unusually observant.  Other, less complimentary words for my personality include 'prying', 'nosy', and 'has an irritating habit of noticing things other people are trying to hide'.  Personally, I prefer observant."

"Oh.  Okay.  I guess I can't blame you for having questions.  But the thing is...  My backstory, as you put it, it's.  Uh.  Kind of weird?"

She raised her eyebrows.  "Weirder than you acting like you've never stepped into a classroom before?  Because I'm pretty sure it couldn't be weirder than that."

"Ah.  Well."  He rubbed the back of his neck.  "I guess that depends on perspective.  But I, uh, I didn't grow up here."

"Yeah, I figured.  What with the being a transfer student and all."

He shot her an irritated glance.  It was kind of nice to see the response, considering that so far everything she'd seen from him had either been anxiety or politeness.

"No - I mean _here_."  He nodded at the laptop in front of her.  "I grew up in - I guess you'd think of them as the Amish?  They weren't, exactly, but they're similar.  We didn't have technology around, or the sort of popular culture I suppose you must be used to.  And then, uh.  Things changed.  And now I'm here."

If they were _like_ the Amish, but not actually them, then who were they?  Why didn't they have a name?  Was it a secret of some kind?  Were they called Amish, but different enough to the normal kind of Amish people that the rest of them didn't want to be associated with them?  Some kind of ultra-Amish?

Between that and the way he spoke, he came across like he was lying.  Which didn't mean that he _was_ , of course; it was exactly the kind of bullshit story that'd attract attention, and maybe he just didn't like the idea of dealing with other people's prying for the first month of school.  It might just seem worse than it was because he was nervous.

Or, alternately, he _was_ lying, and the real story was even more likely to attract questions.  Maybe he'd been raised in a cult - actually, that made a lot of sense, if he'd come out of a for-serious cult he might not have had a normal education and he probably wouldn't know a lot about the outside world and a high school this size would probably be more people than he'd ever seen in his life.  He might even be in witness protection.  Or child protective services, and they'd told him to lie about his background because it'd be easy for people to find out where he'd come from and then the cult might try to kidnap him.

He was _definitely_ from a cult, holy shit.  This was... absolutely not the wildest thing she'd ever found out, but it was _definitely_ up there.  Which put it pretty firmly on the list of things she could never tell anyone about or even think about, just in case. 

It'd be really nice if that list didn't keep getting longer.

"That must've been a pretty big adjustment."

"That's one way of putting it."  He looked down, rearranging his pens.  "This is better.  In a lot of ways.  It's just... really different."

"I guess it would be."  She cleared her throat.  "So, how far behind are you, school-wise?"

His cheeks reddened.  "Not as far as you'd think.  I've been doing a lot of self-study, and the people I'm staying with have offered me tutors.  I'd... I'd prefer not to have to use them, really.  They have other things to be doing than helping me catch up.  But I, uh, I guess I'd better not let my pride get too much in the way.  I don't want to hurt your grades."

"Oh, don't worry too much.  It'll be nice to work with someone who isn't hilariously far ahead of me - well, in some subjects, anyway.  My last lab partner was a bona fide genius.  So she was _fantastic_ when we were studying anything to do with the solar system, pretty great for physics in general and... kind of lacking anywhere else.  Just didn't find them that interesting, I think."  She bit the inside of her cheek.  She still didn't know he wasn't some kind of asshole.  "Maybe I could help you out in some of the other subjects?  I used to tutor Jane through English and history."

"I don't want to keep you away from your friends..."

"No, that's fine."  She smiled.  It was the sort of smile someone would have if they were properly excited for their best friend's amazing opportunity.  She'd practised in the mirror.  "It was really only ever Jane and me, and she's off at genius school now.  She got a really good scholarship."

"Oh."  He looked like he was restraining himself from saying something sympathetic.  "Well, then.  I'd be glad for any help you can give me.  And I'll have to see if there's any way I can return the favour."

"Don't worry about it."

"I -"

"No.  Really."  She didn't need another Jane.  She still had her.  "I'm good.  You've got a lot to adjust to."

"If you're sure."  He glanced back down at the worksheets.  "Sorry to turn the topic back to boring things again, but I figure we'd better look like we _tried_ to finish them, and there's only ten minutes of class left..."

 

Darcy glanced around the empty hallway.  She knew more or less where she was going - Jane had texted her a blurry photo of a map of the campus, with the labs circled in heavy red pen - but more or less wasn't the same as _actually knowing_.  And for all she knew, there were multiple levels of labs.  The building had definitely looked tall enough.

Sticking her head in every single door seemed like a bad idea.  It'd take forever, and just because nobody had stopped her from walking onto the campus didn't mean she was actually _allowed_ to be here.  She didn't want to get Jane in trouble. 

If she were meeting anyone else, the obvious answer would be to text them, but that assumed Jane would pay attention.  And that she hadn't accidentally left her phone on silent again.

Maybe -

"Hi!"

She winced and turned.  The girl who'd called out to her didn't _look_ angry, or like she was about to call some kind of authority figure; she mostly looked curious.  And hot, in the way a lot of actors were; tall, pale, long dark hair.  She'd probably never had to deal with curls twisting themselves into a knot.  Or had trouble buying clothes that fit properly off the rack.

"Are you Darcy Lewis?"

She blinked.  Jane had mentioned finding someone to sit with at mealtimes, hadn't she?"

"I guess that makes you Betty?"

"It's nice to meet you.  Oh - you'd better come in.  We're allowed to have visitors, and we're allowed to go in the labs after hours as long as we've passed basic safety tests, but I'm not sure if we're allowed to do both."

She sounded sincere.  Darcy bit back her first sarcastic response as she followed her into the lab, and also her second one, because it wasn't Betty's fault she was super possessive of her friends and also kind of a bitch, and it _also_ wasn't Betty's fault she was gorgeous and smart enough to get into Genius School, and it also-and-especially wasn't her fault that Darcy was apparently inconsistent enough that she could want her best friend not to be alone at her new school and also get really jealous when she actually met that new friend.

This was a good thing.  It really was.

Maybe she should think of it as doing a favour to Betty?  She clearly didn't have her own circle of friends, after all.  She needed Jane as much as Jane needed her.

Or, okay, maybe she was wrong - but the way Jane had talked about her when she'd asked Darcy to come visit, it'd really sounded like she was lonely too.  And it had to be obvious if Jane'd noticed it.  People weren't her strongest suit.

"So, uh, are you new here as well?"

"Yeah.  Dad put an application in last year - I think he was hoping I could start then, but it ended up being too late in the semester to transfer."  Her expression flattened, a little of the cheerfulness leaking out of her voice.  Some kind of conflict there, by the looks of it.

Not that Darcy actually _cared_.  Noticing and acting on weird things just got you into trouble.  She wasn't going to do it.

"Well.  I guess I'm glad Jane has someone here to spend time with.  She can get a little..."

"Focused?"  She flashed a smile.  "I knew someone like that at my old school.  And I'd be a liar if I said I'd never gotten wrapped up in one of my own projects.  Sometimes it's nice to have people you can just... work around, right?  And not have to worry they're going to interrupt you all the time."

"I guess."  She glanced over at Jane, who was sitting at a lab bench at the far end of the room, surrounded by piles of paper.  As she watched, a few sheets slid off the table and across the room.  Jane didn't notice.  "Do you guys have homework already?  Or is that more along the lines of recreational science?"

"We do have homework, yes.  Jane isn't doing it."

"That's not really a surprise."  She eyed her for a moment longer.  Interrupting Jane in the middle of a science binge was like waking someone up in the middle of the night: it was absolutely possible, but if you picked the wrong moment she'd be grumpy and tired and have a hard time focusing on whatever she was actually supposed to be doing.  It'd probably be easier to wait until she actually noticed Darcy had showed up.  "Do you mind if I do a few readings while we wait for her?"

"Oh, no, that's fine.  I have to write up a lab report anyway."

They settled in at adjacent tables, Betty typing several pages of closely-written notes up rapidly while Darcy attempted to get into her textbook.  It definitely wasn't the best read she'd ever been assigned.  Maybe someone might've done a summary online?  It wasn't the best way to learn, but then at least she'd actually be able to _concentrate_.

The history teacher she'd had last year had been only too happy for her to riff off his essay prompts.  She was pretty sure he'd rationalised it as his way of getting his students to educate themselves, which... wasn't wrong, admittedly.  She'd probably learned as much from finding poorly-sourced Tumblr rants about history, working out what bits were true, and then expanding on it as she would've from the textbook.  But that book had been readable, too.  The fact that she'd been assigned this book didn't bode well for her chances of getting to do interesting essays this year.

Clearly, she was just going to have to resort to writing an interesting essay alongside the boring one - or doing the research for it, anyway - and then yelling facts at Jane.  Her education had to consist of more than just astrophysics, right?

Maybe she should find out what kind of a person Betty was before she started, though.  It'd be super awkward if it turned out she was secretly a shitty person.

"What are your feelings on the military-industrial complex?"

She blinked, looking up from the screen in front of her.  "That it's bad?  There's really only one answer to that question."

"Awesome!  I can see we're going to get on."  She hadn't even stopped to think about it.  Awesome.

Jane popped her head up from her piles of paper, frowning.  "Darcy, are you being weird at Betty?"

"I'm asking important questions I need to know the answers to!"

"So, yes."

"So, no."

"Don't scare her off.  I _like_ Betty."

"You should take that as a compliment," Darcy said in an exaggerated stage-whisper to Betty, who'd propped her chin in one hand to watch the byplay.  "Mostly she doesn't notice other people exist."

"Oh, that's normal, then?  I'd thought it was just me."

"Hey!"

"Jane, you know I love you, but we also _both_ know you tend to hyperfixate when there's interesting science in front of you.  I'm sure you're not the only scientist out there to do it."

She pulled herself up onto the table, sticking her tongue out.  Paper scattered everywhere.  "So you said you were making friends with some new guy, right?  What's he like?"

"I'm not _making friends_ -"

Jane rolled her eyes.  "Fine.  You're sitting with him in class, entirely under duress, and if friendliness happens it's totally by accident.  I understand how it is."

"You make me sound like some kind of human cactus," she said, crossing her arms.

"That's because you are.  You just do a good job convincing authority figures you're nice and kind and that sort of thing.  New guy?"

She sighed, doing her best to ignore Betty's amused expression.  "He's okay.  Doesn't seem like too much of an asshole.  He's had an, uh..."  What should she say?  She couldn't tell them what she thought had really happened; she _should_ just repeat the Amish story, but the memory of the way he'd told it made her pause.  He hadn't wanted to lie.  Maybe it'd be kinder to save him the effort if he ever met Jane - but would she even bother asking?  "A disrupted education, I think he said.  Doesn't seem like he's going to drag my marks down too much, but you know me.  Doesn't take much effort."

Betty frowned.  "You can't be that bad.  Jane told me you helped her build some of her - what did you call them?  Astronomical detectors?"

"Yeah, but I had to _work_ for that.  That's gonna be a lot harder without Jane there to prop up the physics end of things.  It's - I like people, okay?  Not equations."

"You don't like people."

"I _understand_ people," she amended.  "I can work out what makes them tick.  So English is easy, because we're past the part where they want us to name parts of speech and all that bullshit, so I just get to bang out essays analysing the writer's or the characters' motivations.  Easy.  Physics?  Less easy."

"I can still tutor you," Jane said.  "I'd... actually kind of like it if you did.  I still have to take core classes."

Betty tucked a hank of hair behind her ear.  "Maybe we could all tutor each other?  I always leaned more towards biochem than anything else.  And I have to take a language credit this year, and I'm just... not great at that."

She shrugged.  "It's not like I'm anything special there?  It's all memorisation and accents, and I've never gotten to the point where it all just... snaps into place, or whatever's supposed to happen."

"Oh."  She bit her lip.  "Maybe you could invite your new, uh, not-friend?  If he was homeschooled, he probably ended up with a weird eclectic set of classes - they're usually behind on the hard sciences and maths but ahead in other areas, and that might mean languages.  And even if he doesn't... it'd be nice."

Darcy pressed her lips together hard, suppressing her first instinct, to yell _No!_ and grab Jane and run off.  They didn't _need_ anyone else - they'd done just fine together for years - but.  She wanted Jane to have a friend.  And it'd be useful to have someone who could help her with science that wasn't physics.  And tutoring groups worked better with more people, she knew that.

"I can ask.  But it, uh, it sounds like a good idea."

"Great!"  She grinned widely, eyes shining.

Yep.  She definitely needed Jane as much as Jane needed her.  Which was kind of weird, considering that she seemed like the kind of friendly that'd have an easy time picking up people to hang around with.  Maybe she'd had a fight with her old friends.  Or something had gone horribly wrong at her old school, and that was why her dad had been in a rush to move her?

Or maybe it was none of Darcy's business and she didn't care anyway and she knew better than to go digging into things that didn't have anything to do with her.  Yeah.

"I need you to explain this essay prompt," Jane said, dropping into a chair to her left.  "I know I gotta do it myself, there's no point doing well in the rest of my classes if I fail English and have to repeat, but I just don't get what they're asking for."

"Hand it over.  But I can't do this every time, Jane."

"I know, I know.  Just..."  She turned puppy-dog eyes on Darcy.  Which was unfair, considering how close her face came to that expression normally.

"This is something you're going to see a lot," she told Betty.  "You'd better get used to it now.  Maybe try building up resistance."

"I'll keep that in mind," she said, lips twitching, and turned back to her lab report.

 

_Ask Betty what language she's doing_ , she texted Jane after class the next day.  _steve knows french - maybe a weird dialect???  but he can teach it & would like tutoring_

By the time she texted back, Darcy was half in bed, trying to decide whether it was too late to watch something on Netflix.  _She picked Latin for some reason but they'll let her transfer.  French is an option_.

_Awesome - see you fri?_

_See you then!_


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> See end note for content warnings.

Natasha eyed the boy they'd sent to meet her.  Tall, muscular, unusual calluses on his hands.  Wearing jeans that were far too tight to fight easily in, but had a boot in his knife.  Possibly another at his waist; judging by what she could see through his shirt, it might be something else.  It'd be a bad idea to wear one so obviously considering how Americans felt about weapons in their schools, anyway.

"So, you're Romanova, right?  I'm Clint Barton."  He held out a hand for her to shake

It would probably be a good idea to demonstrate she could be friendly to fellow agents - well, fellow _future_ agents.  Not that he was likely to understand the subtleties of Russian names, but even Americans understood the difference between using someone's first and last name.  "Call me Natasha.  You've been sentenced here too?"

"I don't know if I'd put it that way.  This is an awful lot cushier than prison, for sure.  And I get to walk out with enough education that people won't just assume I'm some dumb hick.  Figure that'll make things easier."

Clearly this assignment was to be a test of her patience in being saddled with some kind of teenage delinquent.  Well, she wouldn't fail.  She possessed discipline, something she suspected this self-described hick lacked.

"But I guess you aren't that pleased to be here."  He stuck his thumbs into the waistband of his jeans, eyeing her in a way that made her twitch.  "Funny thing.  Since you could just walk off."

She narrowed her eyes at him.  "Not if I want to stay with SHIELD."

"Good to know you're as attached to it as I am, I guess."  He glanced away, like a glaring spotlight being turned off her.  "C'mon.  I'll show you around."

 

Dr Chu clearly had no idea what she was talking about.

Natasha had tried to give this idea a chance.  Perhaps there _was_ some useful purpose to her attending a high school.  But, having wasted a day, she was more sure than ever that it was pointless.

At what point in her life was she going to need algebra?  She was a spy!  The only mathematics she would ever need to worry about was counting ammunition.  And the rest - literature?  History?  Languages had a use, but she was long since past needing such introductory lessons.  There was nothing this school could teach her that she actually needed to learn.

That wasn't counting the students, either.  They were, to a one, juvenile and irritating.  She wasn't sure how she'd cope being trapped with them for - how long?  Coulson had never said, now that she thought about it.

She hadn't asked.  The idea of questioning a superior officer was still a foreign and uncomfortable one.  It had taken every piece of the composure she'd taught herself to look into his eyes and ask _why_ , let alone anything else.

It was going to take far more than that to manage more than a week in this place.

Perhaps that was why she'd been sent.  Perhaps SHIELD dealt with civilians more than she was used to doing in her time with the Red Room, and they wanted to ensure she'd be capable of it.  It wasn't a terrible idea, considering how much she disliked them after so short a time.

And, for that matter, Coulson might have had a point about her ability to blend with teenagers.  On most of her missions she'd played characters at least a few years older than herself, alluring women who could lead men around by the nose; the few times she'd gone younger, she'd been precocious and dignified.  Nothing like the chaos she saw here, children showing their emotions to everyone they met, playacting at adult dramas as if they were _important_.  If she needed to blend into a crowd like this, she'd be utterly unprepared.

It made sense, she supposed.  None of the Red Room's targets had required that kind of environment.  They were the wealthy and powerful, people who made the circuits of ballrooms and government halls.  Clearly SHIELD worked with an entirely different class of people.

She could learn this.  And she would.  As quickly as she could, so she could get to where the _real_ work was.  She'd show them just how valuable the Black Widow could be.

 

"You throw _knives?_ "

She couldn't quite keep the disdain out of her voice.  It was the sort of flashy move the Red Room had never allowed them to learn.  Too easy to see it coming.  Too easy to avoid.  Better to keep the weapon in your hand and make sure the target never knew you were a threat.

"Sure I do."  Barton tugged it out of the tree he'd thrown it at and flopped back down beside her, leaving a healthy gap between them.  "You don't?"

"Of course not."

He studied her, head tipped to the side.  "Wanna learn?"

"Of _course_ not."

"Well, lemme know if you change your mind."  He threw it again, one eye closed.  It slammed into the trunk, pinning a falling leaf in place.

"Who on earth bothered to teach you such a useless skill?"

He shrugged.  "Me?"

"Why?"

"'Cause it's cool?"  He crossed back over to the tree, testing the edge of the blade against his thumb.  "Anyway, I'm a marksman.  Better to be able to use as many weapons as possible, right?"

"You mean a sniper.  Why on earth would a sniper bother with knives when rifles exist?"

He squinted at her.  "If you say so."

 

Possibly the only thing worse than the time spent around the teeming masses at her _school_ was the time spent with Dr Chu.

She was kind.  She was gentle.  She asked questions, so many questions, but she never pushed for answers. 

Natasha answered everything, of course.  She'd never become a real agent if they thought she was hiding things from them.

But she couldn't shake the feeling that Dr Chu was looking for something else.  Some - reaction?  Emotion?  Something she expected to see, and wasn't.

If she knew what it was, she could do it.  Show an emotion the way she'd been taught to, constructed from what she remembered from the early days in the Red Room before they'd taught her composure and honed by years of practise.  But she couldn't just throw reactions out there; if Chu thought she was being lied to, she'd tell Coulson she was unfit for service, and that would be it.

She'd considered breaking into Chu's files.  But that would be just as damaging if she were caught.  And if they thought she was looking at anyone _else's_ files... no, it wasn't worth the risk.

She just wanted to know what she had to do.  She'd always known, in the Red Room.  They'd made sure she did.  Why couldn't SHIELD work the same way?

 

"Hey, you look like shit."

Natasha levelled a glare at him.  Normally she would have stopped herself - Barton hadn't earned the right to see what she was feeling - but she was exhausted.  Maintaining a distance between them was too much effort today.

"You know they've got a medbay in the SHIELD housing facility, right?" he added, jogging backwards in front of her as she stalked through the halls.  This was not a good morning for algebra to be her first class.

"I am aware, yes."

"Okay."  He glanced behind himself, yelped, and spun around a knot of chattering students.  "Have you, like, actually thought about going there?"

"Yes."

She'd thought.  She'd thought about the fact that she kept waking up in the night drenched in sweat; she'd thought about the time she'd actually slept over the last week, which was less than she should have slept in a night; she'd thought about how, in the Red Room, she'd trained like this, lights flashing on at intervals to wake them, disorient them, teach them to manage exhaustion and fight on despite it.  She'd thought about how much harder that seemed to be now.

She'd thought about SHIELD knowing about her weakness.  Her failure.

She'd survived the Red Room by not failing tests.  She didn't intend to fail now.

"Okay."  He frowned.  "Okay.  Maybe... think about it some more?  Anyway, uh, Coulson's coming here, just so you know."

For a moment, the hallway seemed very loud, the background gossip rising to the level of a roar.  "What?"

"I said -"

She grabbed his arm, steering him into a nearby empty classroom.  "He's coming here?  Why?"

He shrugged.  "He's taking over as the onsite agent?"

" _Why?_ "  Had she failed?  Was he here to -  "The onsite agent?"

"Well, yeah.  There's been someone here the whole time I was.  I think they pick someone who needs a break doing less stressful stuff, usually?  They rotate.  It's some kind of admin job, I think, so nobody cares enough to notice people swapping out.  Anyway, the dude who was here at the start of the year got called away to consult on something - which is good, he was an asshole - and Coulson's replacing him.  Officially he's here because they wanted a higher-ranked agent on site now there's more people here than just me.  Unofficially, he broke three ribs tripping over some of his shit at home and the Director thinks he'll be less likely to do something stupid if he's on a desk job."

Natasha stared at him.  "You have good sources."

"People like me.  Well... sometimes.  Sometimes they hate me on first sight.  It's a gift."

"Oh."  She wasn't sure she'd call this _liking_ him, but then, she didn't hate him, did she?  "Thank you for telling me."

"It's all good.  I would've been twitchy if he'd shown up here my first six months."

"I'm not twitchy."

"Sure."  He paused, mouth working, before meeting her eyes.  "If you wanna have a nap or something over lunch, I've got a blanket hidden out by the tree I showed you?  With the knife?  Light's real bright, so it works better sometimes if I'm not sleeping nights.  And I'm pretty much the only one who ever goes out there, so it's not like anyone'll find you."

She pressed her lips together.  But was there a point in denying it now?  "Thank you."

"It's cool.  Anyway, I've gotta go pretend like the dick jokes in Shakespeare aren't super obvious when people read it out loud, so I'll see you later?"

"Sure."

Maybe she did like him.  A little.

 

The dreams weren't bad.  She didn't understand why she had them.  They were just memories, after all.  She'd lived through it the first time.  Why should any of it bother her now?

Anya, fingers clutching at the knife in her gut.  Her fingers around Irina's throat and the way the bones had felt as they broke, vibrating up her fingers.  Kristina, flailing at her as she pressed down, hands growing weaker as she lost air.  The nod of the handler.  _Yes.  She's weak.  Finish her_.

It could have been her.  So many times.  Why didn't she dream about that?  People wanted to live, she knew that; it only made sense that the idea of dying should frighten them, haunt their nightmares and their sleepless hours.

Why did they bother her, these girls who'd trained alongside her?  They'd failed.  They'd all known the price for failure.

Anya had looked so surprised.

 

"Hey, wanna come out with me?"

She was still tired.  Better, now that she'd given into the temptation to use Barton's hideout to sleep during the day.  But it hadn't solved the problem.

She wasn't quite sure she wanted whatever surprise he had in store.  It wasn't worth the argument, though, not when she had nothing else to do.

Homework.  But she didn't care about that, except in that doing it would demonstrate to SHIELD that she was adapting to her situation.  It didn't need so much effort that she had to devote the entire weekend to it.

She ought to have been more worried about wandering around the city.  Barton was there, though, with his knives, and a case she supposed must be for a rifle slung over his back.  He could manage long enough for her to wake up in the case of an attack.

"We're here!"

She glanced up at the building, frowning.  "A range?"

"Yep!"

"SHIELD has one of those."

"Well... kind of?  It's always busy.  And there's surveillance and stuff.  This is private."

"But they must know you come here."

"Sure.  But it's not like they care, you know?"

Natasha wasn't quite sure that held together - why come to a _private_ range if SHIELD knew, and didn't care?  Why was he worried about surveillance? - but she followed him in anyway.  It _was_ quieter here than the SHIELD range had been, the one time she'd put her head in the door; the visitors seemed to be entirely civilians, almost all carrying their own rifles.

Which was strange.  Civilians didn't practise with sniper rifles.

"This is Nat," Barton was saying to the older woman at the desk.  "I know she's not a member -"

She waved it off.  "She's a friend of yours, right?  I can overlook it.  Just this once, though!"

"Sure, sure.  C'mon, Natasha, I'll show you around."

He led her into the range itself.  It was more or less what she'd expected from a civilian version: round targets instead of person-shaped ones, far fewer people, and -

"They're using bows."

"Yep!"

She glanced over at him as he opened the case on his back.  " _You're_ using a bow."

His grin was pure mischief.

"Do you have some kind of love affair with mediaeval weapons?"

"I like bows."

"Please don't tell me _this_ is your primary weapon."

"I can use guns, sure."  He shrugged, setting an arrow to his string.  "I like bows more.  Coulson doesn't mind.  Which is good, 'cause it seems like a lot of people in SHIELD don't get it."

She folded her arms.  "What is there to get?"

"It's quiet.  Doesn't set off a metal detector if you use the right type of arrows.  Really freaks people out, hearing arrows going past at night.  And it's not like it makes any difference, right?  I'm a sniper.  I need to be precise, not fast.  I can shoot as quick as I could with a rifle - maybe quicker - and do as much damage.  Rifles are easier to learn to use, but that's not a problem.  I already know how to do this."

The arrow landed.  From here, it looked like it'd landed precisely in the centre of the target.  She'd bet that'd hold up on close viewing too.

"And you would not _believe_ how much it annoys some of the SHIELD agents seeing me do this on the ranges," he added, smirking.  "They've got whole rants about Stone Age weapons and time-wasting and that kind of shit now."

"Really?"

"Oh, yeah."

A second arrow landed, close enough to the first she could barely tell the difference.

"I used to do ballet."  The words left her lips without any thought.  He'd shown her this, hadn't he?

"Yeah?"

"It was... nice."  She'd loved the way it made her feel.  Graceful, but powerful.  The martial arts she'd learned later had been the same way.  "But I got hurt.  Missed out on getting into the Academy."

"Ah, that sucks."  He aimed and fired, smooth as silk.  "Got told I could be in the Olympics once.  But, y'know, shit happens.  It's not for people like us, right?"

"No.  It's not."

They walked back a different way, past an ice-cream parlour Clint insisted on stopping at.  He bought her a cone.  It was decadent, like everything in America seemed to be.

She ate every bite.

On their way out, they were halted by a group of children, giggling girls in pink leotards with coats thrown over the top.

"See, these are the experiences you just don't get sitting in SHIELD all day," Clint said, edging back to avoid a tussle.  "How old are they, anyway?  I can never tell.  They've gotta be, like... just barely school-aged, right?  Don't kids that age learn how to line up for things?"

"I don't know."  She'd known how when she learned ballet.  They'd stood by the barre in rows, done everything in unison.  At the end of the day... what?  She didn't remember parents like the ones in front of her, flustered and smiling.

Had Anya been any older than them when she'd clutched at the knife, blood flowing over her fingers?

She'd been a ballerina before the Red Room.  She _had_.

When?

 

_Anya, fingers around the knife, and Irina, little bones snapping, and Katrina, purple-faced, and Olga, skull blown out, and Nadya, and Dominika, and Svetlana -_

She woke, fumbling for a knife.  Blinked around her little apartment.  SHIELD.  America.  New York.

She was here to earn her way into SHIELD.  She knew that, now she was awake.  And she _would_ do it.  Even if it meant dealing with chattering children -

The knife slid out of her fingers.

Children.

Oh.

They'd called them trainees.  Soldiers.  Warriors, even.  The future Black Widows, ready to fight for their country.

How carefully they'd chosen their words.

Had she ever dared to befriend the girls beside her?  Had _any_ of them?  Perhaps they'd been the ones who vanished, who they were told were going to training elsewhere but they all knew had failed -

_Children_.

No wonder she'd never learned to infiltrate among those her own age.

How old had Anya been?  How old had any of them been?

Children.

She didn't know what to do.

There was an answer here.  A correct answer.  There always was.  She knew that.  That was how it'd been, in the Red Room.

Sometimes the answer meant killing a trainee.

She swallowed hard.  There was an answer here.  A better one than that.  She just had to work out what it was.

And what _she_ was.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for depictions of child injury and death and implied brainwashing. I'm not sure, considering how brief it is, whether this is enough to earn a Graphic Depictions of Violence warning; input is welcome.

**Author's Note:**

> There are three things I love: identity porn, Nomad, and AUs that force me to really think about characterisation and how it might change, or not change, from canon. Non-mundane mundane AUs (with Nomad) are the perfect expression of this love, and so it was only a matter of time until this happened.
> 
> (Heavily inspired by Iron Man: Armored Adventures, but it's drifted far enough from that source material by this point that it seemed like false advertising to tag it.)
> 
> Written (after various false starts over the past five years) for the 12 Months of AU challenge; posted incomplete because there was no way in hell I'd be able to finish the entire thing by the end of the month, but I'd be damned if I didn't post _any_.


End file.
